Assessment of antenatal care received and its association with different factors among the postnatal mothers: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) provides an opportunity for screening, diagnosis, health promotion and disease prevention among pregnant mothers and their children. Therefore, this study was done to determine the utilization of antenatal services among postnatal mothers.

Materials and methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from August 2023 to October 2023 among postnatal mothers admitted to the postnatal ward of a tertiary care institution. A total of 165 postnatal mothers fulfilling inclusion criteria were selected by simple random sampling, and data were collected by interviewing them using a pre-designed, pre-tested, semi-structured schedule. Data was entered in MS Excel and analysed using IBM SPSS 20.0 version (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY).

Results: About 58.7% of study subjects attended all four antenatal visits. 73.3% registered early for their pregnancy. Mostly (47.3%) registration was done at the Primary Health Centre (PHC). Physical examination, including weight, blood pressure, pallor, oedema and abdominal examination, was done more than once in 89.7% of study subjects. 95.2% did urine test, 88.5% did haemoglobin estimation more than once, 60% postnatal mothers received at least 100 iron and folic acid tablets during pregnancy and 92.1% received both doses of Td (tetanus and diphtheria) vaccine. Similarly, the majority, 89.2%, received counselling on danger signs, and only 78.2% received counselling on birth preparedness. A significant association was observed among the number of antenatal visits and educational status (P = 0.001), residence (P = 0.03), socio-economic status (P = 0.03) and age of marriage (P = 0.02).

Conclusions: Although most of the postnatal mothers received ANC services, some aspects of ANC need to be improved, mainly counselling of mothers.